Category: Mobile

As the 2020 Olympics technique, Sony is demolishing its flagship save to create a transient park. Is this an try to modernize the Japanese electronics brand – or simply every other nail within the coffin for Tokyo’s postwar structure?
Sony constructing Tokyo

For 1/2 a century, the Sony Building in Tokyo has attracted home and foreign tourists to the upmarket Ginza district. The flagship constructing went up in 1966 at a time while the excessive-rise megalopolis that could sooner or later provide the set for Blade Runner and the foundation for Akira was nonetheless in its infancy, and displayed global-changing merchandise along with the Walkman and Trinitron TV.

Now, the consumer electronics corporation plans to demolish its flagship shop and quickly replace it with a park. The lack of Yoshinobu Ashihara’s building can be felt in a Tokyo that continuously demolishes and rebuilds, wiping out its architectural, historical past. But in a town like Tokyo where public space is woefully missing – maximum of it indoors and committed to retail – an city oasis could surely assist the city, now not to mention the as soon as-powerful corporation’s suffering emblem.

Brutal and urban from the out of doors, the Sony Building’s indoors is something exceptional. Typical of Ashihara’s different buildings from this era, it has a couple of of-degree floors that defy the conventions of the common retail complex. “I made the whole interior space non-stop via setting 27 floors on successive specific levels,” the architect wrote of the building. The result is a shop where floors spiral spherical, like a staircase.

It became constructed at a time while Japanese architects have been beginning to imagine a new, more potent and greater confident town within the aftermath of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Fifty years later, that metropolis has arrived – and appears decided to wipe out all hint of its past.

The Hotel Okura, pictured on eleven August 2015, in Tokyo.
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Critics have derided plans to demolish and rebuild Tokyo’s modernist 1962 Hotel Okura beforehand of the 2020 Olympics. Photograph: The Asahi Shimbun/Getty
“The demolition of Yoshinobu Ashihara’s iconic landmark building offers any other blow to preservation efforts of important postwar modern-day structure,” stated Dr. Christian Dimmer, professor of city research at Waseda University in Tokyo. “It reveals itself here inside the corporation of the Hotel Okura, or the endangered Nakagin Capsule Tower, or the Kamakura MoMA.”

Indeed, protection in Tokyo is a rarity. Ginza itself is a constant whirl of demolition and reconstruction. A quick stroll up the road is the Kabukiza Theatre, torn down and rebuilt five times on account that it’s 1889 opening. Its ultra-modern incarnation, designed via Kengo Kuma, has a 145m workplace tower jutting out of its again. Tsukiji, near the theatre, is about to demolish its big fish marketplace, depriving the town of one in all its few Bauhaus-inspired pieces of architecture. Part of the land will now be a brand new street.

Sony’s selection to update its constructing with open space became welcomed. “The choice to quickly update it with an actual park in preference to a vehicle park is certainly commendable,” stated architect LS Peter Philipps of Design Fresco in Osaka. The save will near on 31 March 2017 and get replaced with the aid of more or less seven hundred square of wood decking, seating, and trees.

For a city of Tokyo’s size, there are few public spaces wherein human beings can loosen up at no cost, even though of the path there are a few essential exceptions such as Yoyogi park. If you want to sit down for some time, that commonly way a restaurant or restaurant.

“The trouble is public space in Japan has grown to be all about retail,” stated Alastair Townsend, director, and architect at Bakako Architects. “It is typically an interior revel in – public space is indoors in Japan.” In Tokyo, space for public correct nearly usually loses out to utilitarian aesthetics and production.

A model of the new Ginza Sony Park.
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A model of the new Ginza Sony Park
“By making the Ginza Sony Park open to the general public, Sony hopes to convert it into an event venue in which site visitors can enjoy precise Kando [emotionally moving] stories, introduced with the aid of both Sony and others,” the company said in an announcement. Today, with the inflow of tourists, mainly Chinese, Ginza has ended up extra associated with visitors who are seeking to shop until they drop.

Misato Suzuki, a Sony spokeswoman, said the park changed into no longer in particular geared toward attracting crowds at some point of the Olympics. “We aren’t an Olympic sponsor, but there are a lot more foreigners coming to the Ginza vicinity now, so we felt they might admire the occasion space,” she stated.

Those vacationers, the agency hopes, will appreciate the park and grow to be more receptive to the Sony emblem. “We are not a hundred% certain but, however, we envisage the distance being used for concerts, movie viewing … things like that,” she said. “After that, in 2022, the new constructing will go up, and to being used to show off Sony products just because the cutting-edge one is.” Plans for the new building haven’t begun to be determined. In the intervening time, Sony will open a transient keep to show off its products at some other Ginza place. The firm’s headquarters will stay in close by Shinagawa.

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Pessimists approximately what will are available in 2022 point to Sony’s last principal architectural venture in valuable Tokyo: the 25-floor Sony City Osaki. Commissioned before the worldwide financial crisis and completed the month of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, it becomes bought in 2013; the Osaki location in the standard is taken into consideration an unmitigated catastrophe. What turned into purported to be a flagship enterprise center inside the west of Tokyo has extra in not unusual with Milton Keynes than Canary Wharf. Commuters come and move, however, the smaller businesses that offer Tokyo a lot of its cultural capital have stayed away. At weekends, the region and its myriad skyscrapers are empty.

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The FBI says it has conclusively tied North Korea to the huge hack of Sony Pictures.

US government have been investigating the leak for the reason that the start of December and had formerly said in public they were not able to set up a link with North Korea and its notorious Bureau 121 hacking unit.

North Korea has denied involvement with the hack, performed through a collection calling itself of Peace (GOP). The organization has launched a slew of quite embarrassing statistics from Sony, disturbing Sony pull the release of The Interview, a comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, which depicts the assassination of North Korean chief Kim Jong-un.

In an announcement launched on Friday, the FBI stated a technical analysis of the malignant software, referred to as malware, used in the attack were linked to other malware “that the FBI knows North Korean actors formerly evolved.” There had been similarities in particular lines of code, encryption algorithms, information deletion strategies and compromised networks, the FBI stated.

The FBI additionally stated that the infrastructure used within the Sony assault changed into similar to different malicious cyber interest geared toward the US that had formerly been linked at once to North Korea. For example, the FBI located that several internet protocols (IP) address associated with acknowledged North Korean infrastructure communicated with IP addresses that have been hardcoded into the records deletion malware used in this attack.

The equipment used within the Sony assault also had similarities to a cyber assault in March 2013 geared toward South Korean banks and media shops, which became executed with the aid of North Korea.

“We are deeply worried approximately the unfavorable nature of this attack on a private region entity and the ordinary citizens who worked there. Further, North Korea’s assault on SPE [Sony Pictures Entertainment] reaffirms that cyber threats pose one of the gravest countrywide security risks to the United States,” the FBI said in an assertion.

“North Korea’s movements have been meant to inflict extensive damage on a US enterprise and suppress the right of American citizens to explicit themselves. Such acts of intimidation fall outside the limits of appropriate nation conduct. The FBI takes seriously any try – whether via cyber-enabled method, threats of violence, or otherwise – to undermine the economic and social prosperity of our citizens.”

Pressure for motion set up as secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said: “The cyber assault in opposition to Sony Pictures Entertainment become now not just an attack against an enterprise and its personnel. It changed into also an assault on our freedom of expression and manner of life.”

GOP reportedly despatched Sony executives a message on Thursday night, calling the studio’s Wednesday selection to cancel the discharge of the arguable film The Interview “very smart”.

The declaration changed into written in broken English and leaked to CNN. It endured: “Now we need you in no way let the movie launched, dispensed or leaked in any shape of, as an example, DVD or piracy.

“And we want everything related to the film, together with its trailers, in addition to its full version down from any web hosting them at once.”

Sony did now not without delay reply to a request for a remark from the .

Reuters had quoted anonymous federal law enforcement officials saying the hack can also have been a collaboration among North Korean and Chinese hackers or that servers in China could have been used to hide the origins of the assault. But the FBI’s formal declaration made no point out of China.

The announcement comes hours earlier than an quit-of-12 months presidential press convention in which President Obama is anticipated to comment on the problem for the first time.

On Thursday the White House described the hack as an “extreme national safety matter” and stated it was considering a proportional response, however, stopped quickly of blaming North Korea.

Senator John McCain, the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee responsible for the investment and oversight of the branch of protection, described the hack as an “act of struggle.”

“This is the greatest blow to unfastened speech that I’ve seen in my lifetime in all likelihood,” McCain told Arizona radio station KFYI 550 on Friday morning, “We ought to reply in type. We have plenty of capability in cyber and we ought to begin cranking that up.”

McCain pledged on Thursday to reinforce oversight of the Obama administration’s cyber security program and blasted the president’s record on the problem.

Any involvement through China could improve an already politically explosive state of affairs. In May, the Justice Department indicted five Chinese navy officials, alleging that they had hacked into US companies on the way to scouse borrow alternate secrets. Among the businesses focused have been Alcoa and US Steel.

The indictment drew a furious reaction from Chinese officials, who stated the expenses have been “based on fabricated records” and “grossly” violated “the fundamental norms governing global members of the family.” China suspended participation in a US-China working institution on cybersecurity.

The FBI has been searching into the Sony hacking scandal considering the fact that the start of December, and had previously stated in public they were unable to establish a link with North Korea and its infamous Bureau 121 hacking unit.

But nameless federal police officers informed various media shops over the past 48 hours that a hyperlink between the hack and North Korea had been hooked up.

Sony has been left reeling from the November attack, after hundreds of exclusive files, including employee social security numbers, non-public emails, unreleased films and executive pay had been published on-line.

On Wednesday, Sony canceled the movie’s launch after threats had been made against cinemagoers and foremost US theater agencies.

Eddie Schwartz, president of White Ops, a cyber safety professional, said many hacks depart a digital “fingerprint” that would permit the authorities to become aware of the wrongdoer.

McCartney’s lawyer Michael Jacobs says the two sides ‘have resolved this matter by entering into a confidential settlement agreement.’

Paul McCartney has reached a settlement over copyright to the Beatles catalog, avoiding a legal battle that could have had wide ramifications for the music business.

McCartney filed a lawsuit in January in a US court to secure rights from Sony ATV music publishing following a British judicial ruling that shook up the industry.

Michael Jacobs, a lawyer for McCartney, late last week informed a judge that the two sides “had resolved this matter by entering into a confidential settlement agreement.”

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Jacobs asked Edgardo Ramos, a federal judge in New York, to dismiss the lawsuit. Representatives declined further comment.

The case revolves around the US Copyright Act of 1976 which aimed to strengthen the hand of songwriters – whose relationship with music publishers, who hold rights and distribute royalties, has been notoriously rocky.

Under the act, songwriters could reclaim copyright from music publishers 35 years after they gave them away – or 56 years for songs from before 1978.

While US law is often seen as the gold standard in the entertainment industry, a British court took a different approach in December.

It refused to grant rights to 1980s pop sensations Duran Duran – known for hits such as Rio and the James Bond theme A View to a Kill – because US law did not apply in Britain.

In his lawsuit, McCartney’s lawyer said a Sony ATV executive approached him at a concert as the Duran Duran case went forward and warned the publisher would fight harder for the Beatles catalog.

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McCartney had vowed in the lawsuit to secure control of the catalog – an issue of growing urgency as the first Beatles single, Love Me Do came out in 1962, meeting the 56-year timeframe under the US act in 2018.

Sony ATV has rights to millions of songs including by other top names in music history such as Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye and Bob Dylan.

The company was initially a joint venture between Jackson and Japan’s Sony Corp, which bought out Jackson’s 50% stake from his estate last year for $750 million.

Ironically, Jackson bought rights to Beatles songs after a leisurely chat with McCartney on the importance of music publishing – a sore point later for the ex-Beatle.

Hollywood studio Sony is investigating the possibility that its servers were hacked by North Korea, in apparent retaliation for the Kim Jong-un baiting comedy The Interview.

At least five high-profile movies, including the upcoming remake of musical Annie and Brad Pitt second world war drama Fury, have found their way onto piracy sites in the wake of a security breach last week, reports Variety. Sony and security experts believe the attack may have been carried out by Chinese hackers working on behalf of North Korea, tech site recode.net reports.
Autocrats in Pyongyang have been strident in their criticism of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s film, which centers on a US plot to assassinate Kim Jong-un and is said to feature a scene in which the face of the “supreme leader” is melted off. North Korean ambassador Ja Song Nam labeled the comedy’s release an act of war in a letter to United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon in July.
Sony has only confirmed that it suffered a “system disruption,” which it was “working diligently to resolve.” However, it appears North Korea may have exacted revenge after The Interview’s stars openly mocked Kim Jong-un on screen and via social media.

“Kim Jong-un’s people believe everything he tells them, including that he can speak to dolphins, or that he doesn’t urinate or defecate,” CIA agent Lizzy Caplin tells TV producer Rogen and show host James Franco in a trailer for the film.

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Watch the trailer for The Interview
“It’s all a marketing ploy,” joked Rogen of Kim Jong-un’s temporary disappearance from public view in October. “We’ve hidden him somewhere, and he’ll be released one week before the movie.”
While The Interview itself does not appear to have been hacked the leaks are no laughing matter for the studio, which now could face losses running into hundreds of millions of dollars on Annie alone because the film has not yet hit cinemas. When a screener copy of Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables 3 hit the web for free earlier this year prior to its theatrical release, the sequel floundered at the US box office with just $39m (against an average of more than $90m for the first two movies in the series).

Other films believed to have leaked two Oscar-tipped dramas, the Mike Leigh biopic Mr. Turner and Alzheimer’s-themed Julianne Moore vehicle Still Alice. The Nathan Frankowski-directed true life tale To Write Love on Her Arms has also appeared on download sites.

Investigators will start through searching on the malware, the software used by the hackers after which look at the following actions they made. “Different organizations have one-of-a-kind styles of activity that they tackle after they enter a device. Those patterns are like a fingerprint, almost like a playbook. You’ll see that they move after sure servers first, that they conduct operations in a positive way.”

Depending on the quantity of data Sony has been capable of collect, investigators could be able to construct a profile of the hack and examine it to beyond attacks, stated Schwartz. He stated there was simplest a “small universe of groups” capable of pulling off a hack as massive as this.

Schwartz stated North Korea changed into able to pull off the Sony hack, but that in beyond cases 1/3 events had been proven to be accountable, and it became doubtful who had commissioned them.

Exchanges in secretive web boards factor to former personnel with a grudge, researchers declare and will give an explanation for how hackers knew how to navigate Sony’s structures
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Security specialists investigating the devastating hack against Sony Pictures seem like shifting far from the concept that the assault becomes achieved by North Korea, focusing as a substitute on disgruntled former personnel of the company.

Researchers at Norse cybersecurity claim that six former personnel ought to have compromised the agency’s networks, arguing that gaining access to and navigating selective statistics could take a detailed information of Sony’s systems.

Norse isn’t always part of the official FBI research, however, did short the authorities on Monday, the organization stated. Though noting that the findings are “hardly conclusive,” Norse senior vice president Kurt Stammberger told the Security Ledger that nine researchers had all started to explore the concept that an insider with a purpose in opposition to Sony would be first-rate located to execute a hack.

The team had started by inspecting a leaked database of personnel made redundant all through a restructuring in May.

Of six people Norse claim had involvement with the hack, one changed into a former staffer made redundant in May after ten years on the company. She had a technical, historical past and had used social media to berate the organization after losing her activity, it is claimed.

Working with pro-piracy activists within the US, Asia, and Europe, she can also have used secretive discussion boards and IRC (chat) to coordinate the assault, researchers claim.

“We see the proof for the ones two groups of people getting collectively,” Stammberger stated.

Meanwhile, FBI investigators are exploring whether hackers outside North Korea have been hired for the assault, a source advised Reuters on Monday. North Korea lacks some of the functionality required to carry out the assault, the corporation believes, so might also have shrunk out a number of the paintings.

The improvement suggests that the FBI can be moving from its previous respectable role, which said that “the FBI now has sufficient records to conclude that the North Korean government is accountable for these movements,” while US president Barack Obama described it as “an act of cybervandalism.” North Korea has denied any involvement.

However, the FBI’s announcement has been met with skepticism using the safety community who have pointed to inconsistencies and conflicting proof inside the case towards North Korea.

Marc Rogers, head of safety for Defcon, said that the malware used in the hack could have required the full-size expertise of Sony’s systems. “While it’s conceivable that an attacker ought to have constructed up to this expertise through the years after which used it to make the malware, Occam’s razor suggests the less difficult explanation of an insider, “ he wrote. “It additionally suits with the natural revenge tact that this began out as.”

Former Anonymous hacker Hector Monsegur, called Sabu, also stated he doubted North Korea turned into accountable. “They don’t have the infrastructure [ to download that volume of data]. They do have state backed hackers, but so does China, so does the united states,” He instructed CBS News that it is much more likely a former employee downloaded after which sold the statistics from Sony.

“The FBI factors to reused code from preceding attacks associated with North Korea, in addition to similarities in the networks used to launch the assaults,” said author Bruce Schneier. “This type of proof is circumstantial at excellent. It’s clean to faux, and it’s even simpler to interpret it incorrectly. In popular, it’s a state of affairs that unexpectedly devolves into storytelling, in which analysts pick bits and portions of the ‘proof’ to in shape the narrative they already have worked out in their heads.”

Schneier also said that diplomatically, it could fit the United States government to be “overconfident in assigning blame for the attack” to try and discourage future assaults via state states.

He additionally pointed to feedback by way of Harvard regulation professor Jonathan Zittrain, who stated Sony is probably endorsed to present the hack as an act or terrorism to help fend off likely proceedings from cutting-edge and former employees broken by using leaked fabric.

“If Sony can represent this as direct interference through or at the behest of a countryside, would possibly that somehow earn them the type of immunity from legal responsibility that you may see other corporations getting when there’s bodily terrorism involved, sponsored via a state?” Zittrain informed AP.

Regardless of what occurs in 2022, for now, citizens get to enjoy the open area in a retail area, that is a rare deal with in Tokyo. “Increasingly, there’s a trend to make ‘personal’ public spaces in new, huge-scale initiatives,” says Phillips. “These are regularly skilfully designed into the improvement and properly maintained. But they experience barely artificial and lack a public fine.”

Perhaps the park might be the trigger for a renaissance in public space. “Sony’s precedent may inspire reluctant nearby governments to finally consider temporary public area interventions,” Dimmer stated. “Why now not similarly experiment with vacant public plots throughout Tokyo, and encourage wider network regeneration? After all, all Tokyo citizens ought to gain from exciting, inclusive public areas, and no longer simplest affluent buyers in a central business district like Ginza.”

But it additionally hyperlinks them to a far wider group of hackers. The Backdoor.Contopee malware has previously been used by a fixed referred to as Lazarus, which has been attacking organizations and industrial operations at some stage in america and South Korea for the closing six years. And Lazarus, in turn, is “related” to some other piece of software, Backdoor.Destover, which became used in the 2014 hacking assault against Sony, which the FBI ended up attributing to the North Korean kingdom.

Fighters of the Libyan forces affiliated with the Tripoli government walk around the giant chandelier of the conference room in the Ouagadougou conference center. The offensive to liberate Sirte, self-proclaimed capital of Islamic State in Libya, took seven months of fighting and about 500 American airstrikes, killing hundreds of soldiers and injuring more than 3,000 in the Libyan army

Reports have pointed the finger at North Korea for the assault which crippled Sony Pictures and leaked documents and movies on line
• FBI joins probe into viable North Korea hack of Sony Pictures

Tuesday 2 December 2014 15.02 GMT Last modified on Friday 14 July 2017 22.Forty-one BST
North Korea has refused to deny involvement within the hack of Sony Pictures, which crippled the studio’s computer systems this week and leaked contemporary blockbusters and personal files on line.

A spokesman for North Korea’s UN assignment stated: “The antagonistic forces are relating the whole thing to the DPRK (North Korea). I kindly endorse you to be patient simply.”

Sony body of workers had been decreased to using pen, paper and fax machines, not able to apply their computer systems. Some sources stated that 70% of documents, files, and even film scripts had been deleted.

Ex-employees of whom Sony held statistics informed they had been concerned that a number of the leaked information allegedly blanketed personal statistics. “There are lots of very non-public data: contracts, payroll information, paintings assessment. Workers [are] dissatisfied they aren’t getting excellent answers from control,” said one. “The query remains if they truly have the documents in question. If they do, it’s a large mess.”

A group calling itself of Peace (Gop) has claimed obligation for the hack, though links between Gop and the North Korean government have no longer been showed.

North Korea threatened ‘merciless counter measures’ over Seth Rogen movie
Many think that Pyongyang’s motivation to hack the studio stems from the imminent launch of the Sony Pictures film The Interview, a James Franco and Seth Rogen comedy that depicts an try to assassinate chief Kim Jong-un. It is suspected that five high-profile Sony movies – which include Brad Pitt’s film Fury – were additionally stolen inside the hack; they have been eventually distributed on numerous record-sharing sites.

The North Korean ambassador Ja Song Nam labeled the comedy’s launch an “act of war” in a letter to the UN secretary standard, Ban Ki-moon, in July, while the North Korean foreign ministry threatened “merciless counter-measures” if america allowed the release of the film.

Sources told technology web page Recode that Sony Pictures turned into investigating the opportunity that hackers working on behalf of North Korea from China had been behind the assault. The company has employed Silicon Valley security firm FireEye to analyze and help repair the computer network.

Similar strategies to assault on South Korea in 2013
Reports later indicated that the gear used to perform the attack on the film studio had been very similar to the ones used to attack South Korean coins machines and tv stations last year, which the united states publicly blamed on North Korea.

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Hackers displayed a message in broken English alongside an image of a skeleton throughout the screens of Sony Pictures personnel, while numerous of the employer’s Twitter money owed was taken over to display malicious messages targeted at chief govt Michael Lynton.

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Keaton Savage @keatonsavage
cool to recognize that RL Stine’s cowl illustrator is still getting work from Hacked By #GOP.
1:19 AM – Nov 25, 2014
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The protection researcher Mark Karpeles advised the that the leaked documents that at the beginning regarded on Reddit last week indicated either Chinese or North Korean hacker were accountable, due to the man or woman encoding utilized in a number of the documents.

“In the file, we had a line with broken characters. Those characters didn’t render proper below any encoding, besides EUC-CN [Chinese] and EUC-KR [Korean] … In this case, the readme.Txt report might be studying great below both EUC-CN and EUC-KR, this means that the record was maximumly probable generated from a pc set in both Chinese or Korean – or the hacker intentionally converted the document (which appears not going),” Karpeles stated.

Hackers made no point out of the ideal leader
Not all security researchers are satisfied that North Korea is in the back of the assault.

“It is difficult to assume that if the component that raised the ire of the hackers became a movie approximately a CIA/Kim Jong-un assassination plot that the hackers wouldn’t talk over with either in their pronouncements,” wrote the unbiased protection researcher Graham Cluley.

“ attack, let’s not overlook, that looks to haven’t any qualms approximately drawing attention to itself … but carelessly forgets to use the possibility to praise North Korea’s ultimate leader or call for the film besmirching his picture to be withdrawn.”

There are similar inconsistencies with previous North Korean hacking attempts. Gop has now not been linked with North Korean activities before, and no previous assaults have made ransom demands of the type made in the first example of this attack on Sony. The Gop hack also singles out Sony Pictures chief govt Lynton, which preceding North Korean attacks have not achieved before.

North Korea’s state-of-the-art Unit 121 cyber department
The USA can sport out an attack of this scale. Despite photos of isolation and citizens deprived of simple net get entry to, Jong-un has known as cyberattacks a “magic weapon” for “ruthless moves” towards South Korea.

A file through Hewlett Packard posted in August 2014 defined the infamous North Korean navy department Unit 121 as completely able to breaking into computer networks, writing and planting computer viruses and carrying out formidable cyberattacks. The North Korean cyberweapons unit turned into created in 1998 and has step by step grown in length and functionality.

It has conducted extra attacks on US army structures than some other united states of america, consisting of Russia and China. North Korea also has an settlement with Iran for cyberwarfare activities, spurred via the discovery of the United States and Israeli cyberweapon Stuxnet.

Leak suggests that American Hustle’s girl superstar became on 7% deal, at the same time as male co-stars Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper had been on 9% every

She’s an Oscar-winner, a Hollywood A-lister and one of the most bankable actors in the international – however, all that wasn’t enough to get Jennifer Lawrence financial parity with her male co-stars in American Hustle.

The emails from Sony Pictures hacked by using a group known as of Peace have revealed that Lawrence turned into paid considerably much less than Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper. She became paid seven “points” (7% of the earnings), rather than the 9% her male co-stars and director David O Russell received.

The Daily Beast reviews that an electronic mail dated 5 December 2013 sent using Andrew Gumpert, president of enterprise affairs and administration for Columbia Pictures, the Sony subsidiary which financed American Hustle, information the lack of wage parity.

The electronic mail, which becomes despatched to Amy Pascal, co-chair of Sony Pictures Entertainment, reads: “Got a steve warren/Gretchen rush call that it’s unfair the male actors get nine% within the pool and Jennifer is handiest at 7pts.” Warren and Rush are Lawrence’s legal representatives.

“You may recall Jennifer became at five (Amy was and is at 7) and WE anted in 2 greater points for Jennifer to get her as much as 7. If each person needs to top Jennifer up, it’s Megan. BUT I assume amy and Jennifer are tied so upping JL, Americana.” “AA” and “Amy” talk to the movie’s different female lead, Amy Adams; Megan is Megan Ellison, head of Annapurna Pictures, which financed the film with Columbia.

Pascal, who has been critically embarrassed via the e-mail leaks this week, answered: “There is a reality here.”

The hack, which may be the paintings of North Korea-affiliated hackers objecting to the portrayal of Kim Jong-un inside the Seth Rogen satire The Interview, has already revealed a huge gender disparity in pay at some stage in Sony Pictures.

Of the 17 personnel at the organization who earn more than $1m a year, best one is a girl. Michael de Luca, co-president of Columbia Pictures, earns nearly $1m extra than his counterpart Hannah Minghella. A leaked spreadsheet from consultancy company Deloitte discovered that during 2005, eighty-five out of the pinnacle 100 earners at Sony Pictures had been men.

Meanwhile, one of the few female directors in Hollywood, Ava DuVernay, whose film Selma has made her the primary black woman director to get hold of a Golden Globe nomination, defined different embarrassing records discovered by the leaks as “sickening and unhappy.”

Pascal and producer Scott Rudin exchanged racially insensitive emails speculating on Barack Obama’s flavor in films, suggesting that he would experience the likes of 12 Years a Slave, The Butler and Django Unchained.

“I have phrases: sickening and sad,” DuVernay advised the change paper Variety at the Washington optimum of Selma.

The film’s producer, Dede Gardner, delivered: “It’s difficult as it’s manifestly a private communique that turned into exposed and made public to the sector, and it’s difficult, I think, for those who know the one’s human beings.

“I’d like to think that it could be a very precious lesson in how powerful the slightest phrases may be, and the way lasting and impactful they may be,” she stated. “It is no comic story. There are not grades of racism. There’s racism.”

On Thursday, the Rev Al Sharpton condemned the emails, announcing: “What is maximum troubling approximately these statements is that they mirror a persevered loss of variety in positions of electricity in primary Hollywood studios. The statements sincerely show how relaxed essential studio powers are with racial language and marginalisation. Her apology isn’t enough; there should be actions by her studio and others to recognize the African American community and mirror that recognize of their hiring and enterprise practices.”

Pascal has due to the fact been in contact with Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who additionally criticized the emails.

• This article changed into amended on sixteen December 2014. An earlier version stated Sony Pictures emails had been hacked through a set calling itself of Democracy.

The united states also have a counter-intuitive gain because of its lack of enormous internet infrastructure. “Cyber war presents a strategic advantage for the reason that outbound attacks are feasible, but inbound attacks would have restrained reach,” said the HP record.

Professional, Architecture, category winner rules are ordering a regular intensive repetition sum up the feeling of the modern city. A variety of urban form and minimalist architecture breaks the old structure, splitting it into triangles, squares and diamond shapes, refracting a new living style on extant spatial structures. Demonstrating a free use of the language of visual forms, it appears like a game, similar to Goldbach’s conjecture; the destruction of the ossified template of the city, a visual exploration of breaking the rules
Portraiture category, second place: Romina Ressia

‘This project explores the idea of beauty,’ Russia says. When I launched the casting for it, the number of applications was incredible.” Her subjects, she explains, are not professional models. ‘They are common people wearing common clothes, but all of them are beautiful. I looked for women of all ages, with different measurements, weight, and heights.’ She also searched, she says, for women with self-confidence and “without complexes or pretensions.”
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User frustration over battery life has steadily increased as people keep devices for longer, but the company has a solution
Sony Xperia XZ and X Compact

There was a time a few years back when a lot of people bought a new smartphone every 18 months, as soon as the latest model dropped and their contract was up. But that has changed.

As the rate of technical improvements slows and new models offer little beyond a shiny new exterior, the urge to spend £600 each year has become easier to ignore. Polling by Fluent and marketer in the US suggests that nearly half of smartphone users now wait at least three years between upgrades, while data from Gallup suggests more than half wait until their phone stops working or becomes “totally obsolete.”

While the features may not date so fast and the outside may still look good as new after two years of use, the battery will almost certainly have had it. Now Sony is trying to fix that, but not by fixing the battery.

Sony Xperia XZ and X Compact
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Sony’s new top-end Xperia XZ and Xperia X Compact Android smartphones both have the company’s new battery longevity technology.
That’s because the lithium ion cells within smartphones don’t exactly need fixing – they will continue to work for years – but their ability to hold their original amount of charge rapidly diminishes with repeated recharging cycles.

Everyone who finds themselves with a chunky battery pack for their new smartphone or desperately searching for a charger by mid-afternoon knows battery capacity is a never-ending headache that only gets worse as a smartphone and its battery ages. Rather than fixing the battery, Sony wants to do something about the recharging.

Jun Makino, Sony mobile’s senior product marketing manager, says: “People are starting to keep hold of their phones for way more than two years usage, so we’ve been looking at ways to try and prolong the life of the smartphone.

“We’ve started learning your charging cycles so that our new Xperia X smartphones only complete charging to 100% when they estimate you’re about to start using them so that the damage caused by maintaining a battery at 100% is negated.”

This is important, a battery that’s usually kept at a charge between 20% and 80% of its capacity is much healthier – it’s going to the extremes that wear it out at a faster rate.

The Japanese electronics firm has partnered with Californian adaptive charging company Qnovo to put technology into its Xperia smartphones. This includes the new top-end Xperia XZ and Xperia X Compact, which Sony reckons will double the life of the battery to around four years.

Sony Xperia XZ and X Compact
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The premium rounded glass, and aluminum body and flat tops bring an unusual look to Sony’s latest smartphones.
Qnovo’s technology carefully controls the voltage put into the battery at the same time as delaying the full charge, helping to fast charge without damaging the cells.

“Of course, we’d still like it if you bought a new Sony phone, but we realise longevity is a trend and we want to help with battery technology and services on the phone such as the Smart Cleaner and Xperia tips that learn your behaviour and help keep it running like new for longer,” said Makino.

For Sony, the new Xperia X line, and particularly the new flagship Xperia XZ launched at IFA in Berlin on Thursday, needs to do things differently to try and attract new customers.

The company has struggled over the past few years, with declining sales and smartphones that while technically very good, have failed to capture buyers’ interest in the face of stiff competition from market-leader Samsung, Apple and rising Chinese smartphone brands such as Huawei.

Is extending battery longevity an idea that will recharge Sony’s fortunes? Only time will tell.

Portraiture category, second place: Romina Ressia‘This project explores the idea of beauty,’ Russia says. When I launched the casting for it, the number of applications was incredible.” Her subjects, she explains, are not professional models. ‘They are common people wearing common clothes, but all of them are beautiful. I looked for women of all ages, with different measurements, weight, and heights.’ She also searched, she says, for women with self-confidence and “without complexes or pretensions.”
Sports category, winner: Yuan Peng

Liu Bingqing and Liu Yujie are twin sisters who have studied and trained in gymnastics since their early childhood in Jining, China
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Sports category, winner: Yuan PengLiu Bingqing and Liu Yujie are twin sisters who have studied and trained in gymnastics since their early childhood in Jining, China
Current affairs and news category, winner: Alessio Romenzi

But in the manner to benefit get admission to the community, the attackers used a selected type of malware, dubbed Trojan.Banswift through Symantec.

The safety studies corporation analyzed the malware used within the Bangladesh attack, and located what it describes as “a top notch document wiping code.” The way the software program deleted documents became as little else the organization had seen. However, it was visible in some other piece of malware, a specimen named Backdoor.Contopee, which was used to hack into monetary corporations in southeast Asia.

Programmers often have quirks that make it into their code, and also, they reuse code among initiatives. Symantec says it believes “special code shared between households and the fact that Backdoor.Contopee became being utilized in restricted targeted assaults in opposition to financial institutions in the area, a manner that system may be attributed to the equal corporation.”

That way the hackers, who obtained public notoriety with the Bangladesh hack, also can have been attacking financial establishments for masses longer than a previously notion.

Today Sony Corp. announced that a goodwill impairment charge for the pictures segment of ¥112.1bn (approximately $962m) was recorded as an operating loss in the third quarter ending 31 December 2016.

The statement continued:

The impairment charge resulted from a downward revision in the future profitability projection for the motion pictures business within the pictures segment. The downward revision was primarily due to a lowering of previous expectations regarding the home entertainment business, mainly driven by an acceleration of market decline. Underlying profitability projections of film performance were also reduced, but the adverse impact of that reduction is expected to be largely mitigated by measures that have been identified to improve the profitability of the motion pictures business.

The studio has struggled in recent years: in 2016, just one of its releases – Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters reboot – landed in its all-time Top 50, with a $128m global take. The previous year, two releases, Skyfall and Hotel Transylvania 2, charted in its Top 20.

Sony also suffered from an email leak in late 2014 that revealed some insider details that embarrassed the studio. Revelations about the salaries of the female leads on American Hustle reignited the gender pay gap debate in Hollywood.

The leak was claimed by North Korea, in response to the lampooning of its leader in Seth Rogen comedy The Interview. That film took $11m worldwide, although home entertainment and pirated copies did well.
When hackers attacked Sony Pictures recently, the greatest fears of Hollywood studio executives – and surely the wildest dreams of their assistants – came true. Thanks to the as yet unidentified, reputedly but probably not North Korean hackers, juicy details of executive salaries and executive emails have been thrown open for all to see. Here are five things we have learned so far:

Hollywood executives are mean …
An email exchange between producer Scott Rudin and Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal involved a spirited discussion about Angelina Jolie’s desire to have David Fincher direct her in Cleopatra, instead of Fincher taking on a film about Apple mogul Steve Jobs. Rudin did not want Jolie, whom he called “a minimally talented spoiled brat” getting involved with the production of the Jobs film. Laboring the point, Rudin, went on to say that the “brat” “thought nothing of shoving this off her plate for 18 months so she could go direct a movie [Unbroken] … She’s a camp event and celebrity, and that’s all, and the last thing anybody needs is to make a giant bomb with her that any fool could see coming.”

… and casually racist …
Pascal, while discussing a breakfast at which she would be meeting President Barack Obama, asked Rudin: “Should I ask him if he like DJANGO” – a reference to the Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained, which is about a freed slave. She continued with this line, asking if she should see if he liked Lee Daniels’ The Butler, about a black man who served eight US presidents and Think Like a Man, an ensemble romantic comedy featuring many prominent black actors. Think Like a Man actor Kevin Hart spoke out against the comments, as did TV megastar Shonda Rhimes, who called the exchange “racist.”

… and they don’t get paid the same …
Sony’s chief executive, Kazuo Hirai, makes about $1.5m. Nine executives below Hirai made as much, or more than their boss, including Sony movie studio executive Michael Lynton, who made $3m.

… and female actors are paid differently too
Jennifer Lawrence
Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence. Not worth as much as her co-stars, apparently. Photograph: Adrees Latif/Reuters
Emails showed that Jennifer Lawrence made less than her male co-stars in American Hustle. In an email exchange between executives, it becomes clear that Lawrence is making less. “You may recall Jennifer was at 5 (Amy was and is at 7) and WE wanted in 2 extra points for Jennifer to get her up to 7. If anyone needs to top Jennifer up its Megan. BUT I think Amy and Jennifer are tied so upping JL, ups AA.” “AA” and “Amy” are Amy Adams, the film’s other female lead; Megan is Megan Ellison, head of the company that financed the film with Columbia.

a Vietnamese monetary group got here in advance to mention that it was centered thru the hackers as properly, and had controlled to forestall a $1m switch. And later that month, Reuters discovered that a third economic group, Ecuador’s Banco del Austro, had moreover fallen prey.

At coronary heart, all the hacks trusted social engineering as a whole lot as technical capabilities. Once the attackers won fraudulent get entry to the Swift community, they messaged the banks’ banks and requested for finances to be transferred – which, normally, they had been. The Bangladesh case simplest got here to moderate because of the truth a typo in one of the commands alerted a worker.

They also gently bend scripts to suit foreign markets
For The Interview, a comedy about assassinating the supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, executives considered making the ending less violent. In an email to Hirai, Pascal wrote: “There is no face melting, less fire in the hair, fewer embers on the face, and the head explosion has been considerably obscured by the fire, as well as darkened to look less like flesh.”

Following criticism, the studio says it will stop selling sanitized versions of its movies if a film-maker objects to a release
Will Ferrell and Sacha Baron Cohen in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby … director, Adam McKay had not been aware a cut version of the film had been released.

Seth Rogen criticizes Sony Pictures plans to release ‘clean versions’ of films
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Sony Pictures is revising its plan to sell sanitized versions of its films after complaints from film-makers.

Sony’s Clean Version initiative, which was announced earlier this month, allows customers to purchase films that have been edited for TV or in-flight entertainment to remove “scenes of graphic violence, offensive language, sexual innuendo and other adult content.” Initially, the studio had made 24 of its films, including Spider-Man and Captain Phillips, available under the scheme.

Now the studio says that it will stop selling the “clean” version of a film if its director objects to its release.

The company acted after it emerged that director Adam McKay was not aware that two of his films, Step Brothers and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, had been included in the initiative. “The Clean Version initiative is news to Adam McKay. He would not have agreed to this,” a representative for the film-maker told the Hollywood Reporter.

In a statement, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment president Man Jit Singh said: “Our directors are of paramount importance to us, and we want to respect those relationships to the utmost. We believed we had obtained approvals from the film-makers involved for the use of their previously supervised television versions as a value-added extra on sales of the full version. But if any of them are unhappy or have reconsidered, we will discontinue it for their films.”

The Clean Version initiative has proved controversial within the film industry. Shortly after its launch, actor Seth Rogen, who has made several films with Sony, tweeted: “Holy shit, please don’t do this to our movies. Thanks.” Director Judd Apatow was also critical, tweeting that the company would get “hell” for the initiative. Apatow later responded to Sony’s statement, tweeting: “So now we are being asked if we are OK with our movies being released in a sanitized form. Let me be clear – it is not OK.”

Meanwhile, the Directors Guild of America has demanded that Sony ceases selling all “clean” versions of its films until the studio has received express permission from directors to sell them.

“While we’re pleased that Sony is acknowledging its mistakes in this area, the DGA expects the immediate removal of all ‘clean’ versions of the affected films from availability until Sony secures permission from every director, and provides them with an opportunity to edit a version for release in new media – consistent with the DGA agreement and directors’ contracts,” the guild said.

“These are hard-fought-for rights that protect a director’s work and vision and are at the very heart of our craft and a thriving film industry. As we have throughout our history, we are committed to fighting the unauthorized editing of films,” the statement added.
Seth Rogen has criticized a new Sony Pictures initiative to make family friendly versions of its films available to viewers.

Sony’s Clean Version initiative allows home entertainment customers to purchase films that have been edited for broadcast television and in-flight entertainment systems. Under the scheme, “scenes of graphic violence, offensive language, sexual innuendo and other adult content” will be censored or removed from some PG-13 and R-rated movies. So far, “clean versions” of 24 films, including Captain Phillips, Step Brothers, and the Spider-Man movies, have been made available to purchase.

Rogen criticized the initiative on Twitter: “Holy shit, please don’t do this to our movies. Thanks.”

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The actor, who has made adult-themed comedies such as Knocked Up and Sausage Party, has produced and appeared in some Sony Pictures films. One of the most notorious of these was The Interview, a satire about North Korea that prompted a cyber-attack on the film studio.

None of Rogen’s films have been included in the initiative, but the studio’s website states that additional “clean versions” of films will be made available in the future, adding: “The Clean Version allows viewing for a wider audience, giving people the chance to watch their favorite films together.”

The initiative is the first attempt by a major studio to offer censored versions of its films. However, some third-party streaming services, including ClearPlay, VidAngel, and Pure Flix, have provided their filtered versions of movies.

Such services are controversial in Hollywood. Last year Warner Bros, Disney and 20th Century Fox won an injunction against VidAngel that ordered its closure. In February, ClearPlay stopped providing edited versions of movies to customers. CEO Matt Jarman said the issue would be resolved “later this year”.

Security researchers Symantec have determined clues inside the malware used as a part of an assault on banks through the global economic messaging network Swift, which proposes a link to the Sony Pictures hacks in 2014.

At least three banks have cautioned assaults which have led to fraudulent Swift transfers. In February, Bangladesh’s important economic institution misplaced $81m (£55m) after fraudulent messages had been despatched via the community coaching a switch to an account in the Philippines. In May,

Factory southwest of Tokyo will be pressing records by March as demand for format surges
A shop manager shows off a period Japanese pressing of the Beatles’ final studio album, Let It Be, at the RECOfan music shop in Tokyo’s Shibuya district.
A shop manager shows off a period Japanese pressing of the Beatles’ final studio album, Let It Be, at the RECOfan shop in Tokyo.
Three decades after it abandoned vinyl production, Sony will start making records again amid surging demand.

A factory southwest of Tokyo will churn out freshly pressed records from March, Sony Music Entertainment said on Thursday.

The Japanese company stopped making vinyl records in 1989 as consumers flocked to CDs and other emerging technology. Japan produced nearly 200m records a year in the mid-seventies, according to the country’s recording industry association.

Sony was a large global player in the development of CDs, which have since taken a back seat to downloads and music streaming.

Vinyl has been making a global comeback as it attracts not only nostalgic older consumers but also younger generations.

Japan’s sole record maker, Toyokasei, was struggling to keep up with the resurgence in vinyl demand, the Nikkei newspaper reported. Sony was scrambling to find older engineers familiar with how to make records, it added.

Panasonic relaunched its popular Technics SL-1200 turntable several years ago as the vinyl market gathered pace.

Sony did not say what music it would release in record format. The Nikkei said the lineup would include popular Japanese songs from the past, including Sony-owned titles, as well as chart-topping contemporary albums.

Global vinyl revenue will top $1bn this year while sales of CDs and digital downloads continue to fall, according to estimates from Deloitte consulting firm.

In Britain, where vinyl’s rebirth has been particularly pronounced, records generated more revenue than advertising-backed tiers of streaming platforms last year.

Landscape category winner and photographer of the year: Frederik Buyckx

This year’s winning photographers have focused on everything from porn stars to hyenas. Here, in northern Montenegro, a shepherd is pictured walking to his herd. The top entries are on display at Somerset House, London, until 7 May
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Landscape category winner, and Photographer of the Year: Frederik Buyck’s picture of a shepherd in northern Montenegro
Portraiture category, third place: Ren shi Chen

This image was taken in Gansu province, China. More than 61 million children in the country’s rural areas have been left behind by parents who have gone to the cities to work
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Portraiture category, third place: Ren shi Chen – a picture of a lone child in Gansu province, China
Contemporary issues category, third place: Lorenzo Maccotta

A cam model poses after his day shift in Bucharest, Romania. The adult webcam industry is worth $1bn annually and is growing fast as technology becomes better and cheaper. Romania, a country with one of the highest rates of youth unemployment in the EU, is now the undisputed world capital of studio-based cam operations; the models are paid by platforms such as Luxembourg-based LiveJasmin, which has 25 million visitors monthly
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Contemporary issues category, third place: Lorenzo Maccotta A cam model poses after his day shift in Bucharest, Romania. The adult webcam industry is worth $1bn annually and is growing fast as technology becomes better and cheaper. Romania, a country with one of the highest rates of youth unemployment in the EU, is now the undisputed world capital of studio-based cam operations; the models are paid by platforms such as Luxembourg-based LiveJasmin, which has 25 million visitors monthly
Architecture category, second place: Julien Chatelin

In her work, Alsultan confronts her experiences as a Saudi single mother. ‘I’ve made peace with the sacrifices I’ve had to make, but I managed to find happiness,’ she says. ‘I was married at the age of 17, but living as a single parent for the final six years of an unhappy 10-year marriage. Many family members commented on how foolish I was to ask for a divorce. Only later did I realize that there were many Saudi women who had had similar experiences.’
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Contemporary issues category, winner: Tasneem AlsultanIn her work, Alsultan confronts her experiences as a Saudi single mother. ‘I’ve made peace with the sacrifices I’ve had to make, but also found happiness,’ she says. ‘I was married at the age of 17, but living as a single parent for the final six years of an unhappy 10-year marriage. Many family members commented on how foolish I was to ask for a divorce. Only later did I realize that there were many Saudi women who had had similar experiences.’
Contemporary issues category, second place: Li Song

‘To show hyenas in their element, I wanted to photograph them at night,’ Burrard-Lucas says. ‘The stars in Africa are so beautiful that I also wanted to include them in my image. I used a remote-control “BeetleCam” to position my camera on the ground so I could photograph the hyena with the beautiful starry sky behind. This is a single exposure. I lit the hyena with two wireless off-camera flashes and used a long shutter speed to expose the stars’
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Natural world category, winner: Will Burrard-Lucas‘To show hyenas in their element, I wanted to photograph them at night,’ Burrard-Lucas says. ‘The stars in Africa are so beautiful that I also wanted to include them in my image. I used a remote-control “BeetleCam” to position my camera on the ground so I could photograph the hyena with the beautiful starry sky behind. This is a single exposure. I lit the hyena with two wireless off-camera flashes and used a long shutter speed to expose the stars’
Architecture category, winner: Dongni

Working from above, the Chinese photographer Dongni reframes the geometries of urban architecture
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